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Comment by mion | Hacker News Reader

Maybe too. But I guess I didn't explain it well enough for the sake of brevity. What I mean is, when you do the startup thing, you may end up neglecting certain things, in my case collge. How do you let them know that you're not wasting time when in fact you're investing in a path they do not understand?

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How do you know you're not wasting time? How did you convince yourself? once you have laid out the arguments you use on yourself - can you figure out why they don't work on your parents? For instance - are you assuming a higher likelihood of success for your startup than they are? Or an easier route back in to college if you get kicked out for failing? Do you know something they don't (or perhaps vice versa)? Do they think college is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and startup ideas will always be there, but you think the opposite? Or is it perhaps a conflict of principles, like you don't care if you do end up working in fast food so long as you gave the startup your best effort, and they think this would be a terrible failure of everything they ever wanted for you?

I got my current mindset after reading many books, articles, pg essays, talking to people and so on. When you become obsessed with something you suck in all the information about the subject out there. I wish I could just show them a 'memory dump' of my brain.

In other words: brainwashing.

That's what happened when you read similar books, followed like-minded people (and have an unhealthy obsession), do discussion with like-minded people or even steer the topic toward your own pont of view.

Be careful. You are living on your own bubble.

"pg essays"

Oh dear. You heard the piper's tune and now nothing else matters. I wonder, does PG still program, or does he make money another way now. There's the clue.

That's great, but if you can't literally write out explicit answers to each of my questions, and explicitly in sentences identify why your parents disagree with you, then you don't know what you're doing and you're just following the crowd. If you can't explain it, you don't know it.

Imagine you were actually trying to convince pg to fund you after he said 'I think you'd be a better founder if you finished college first'. What would you tell him?

You only have one degree, whilst you have plenty of years. Spend a bit of the next 2 or so years making sure your degree is the best you can get. It'll be handy when your startup fails (everyone fails, it's not a reflection on you) and you need a job!

Honestly, I went through the same thing with my parents ("When are you going to get a real job?") during my gap year freelancing. As people have said before, you can show them your success... but your degree is definitely part of that, and you'll rather you had spent $100k on a 4.0 than a "just scraped by"

Yes you didn't explain it very well. Are you working on a startup, or are you contributing to random open source projects? Your family isn't necessarily "conservative," just experienced. But it almost sounds like you are wasting your time going to college. If you aren't getting the most out of your college tuition, then you are wasting time and money. Perhaps you should take some time from college (it isn't for everyone) and do something else. Of course it is very difficult to get a job with a company (startup or otherwise) without experience or a degree, or both. And contributing to an open source project without a degree might not be enough.

Well, other people drop out of uni to pursue a startup. If your GPA falls, it's not really that bad.

Horrible advice. You've read a paragraph about the kid and you're telling him that it's okay for him to dropout of college. Maybe it worked for you, or those "other people" but that doesn't mean it would work for OP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

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